Webinar: Ethical tensions and harms in peer research and engagement
Event date: -
Event type: Single day (a day or less)
Recruiting and hiring peer researchers—individuals with direct experience of a phenomenon under investigation—is widely acknowledged as a best practice in community-based health research. However, there is a notable gap in the existing research literature when it comes to understanding the experiences of peer researchers themselves.
In this webinar, you will hear insights from a participatory, qualitative research project concentrating on four intersecting communities often engaged in peer research:
- Mental health service user communities
- Communities of people who use drugs
- Trans and non-binary communities
- Racialized communities
Our discussion will underscore shared experiences across these communities, such as exposure to intersecting systemic oppressions. Drawing upon the project’s findings, the researchers advocate for a more reflexive and critically informed approach to applying peer research methodologies, particularly for health researchers involved in collaborative projects with service user communities.
Date: January 25, 2024
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m. EST
Who should attend?
Researchers and those interested in peer research across universities, hospitals and allied sectors.
Learning Objectives
After watching, participants will be able to:
- identify some of the harms that can be experienced by peer researchers through their involvement as staff in research projects
- discuss how people who are hired as peer researchers experience these harms based on their lived experience with the mental health system and
- reflect on strategies to try to mitigate these harms.
Presenters
Merrick Pilling (he/him) is an assistant professor in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Queer & Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice and co-editor of Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness: Documented Lives.
Lori Ross (she/her) is an associate professor in the Division of Social and Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and an interdisciplinary scholar in 2SLGBTQ+ health. Link to: https://lgbtqhealth.ca/team/#LoriRoss
Moderator
Lucy Costa (she/her) is the deputy executive director of the Empowerment Council, an organization dedicated to representing service users' scholarship, voice and rights.
About the organizers
The Empowerment Council (EC) is a patient advocacy organization working to empower the collective voice of service users of the mental health and addiction systems. The EC is a leader in enacting systemic change for mental health and addiction survivors and clients, primarily in the GTA. We are a service-user organization funded by CAMH but take its direction entirely from service users. The EC has two types of members: service users, who are voting members, and allies, who are non-voting members.
The EC has represented clients on multiple CAMH Committees, organized numerous consultations and focus groups, reviewed CAMH policies and provided client perspectives. We’ve worked with community and academic partners and sought justice through inquests and addressing legislative and senate committees.
Provincial Support System Program (PSSP)
The Provincial System Support Program (PSSP) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) works with communities, service providers, government, and system partners to move evidence to action and create sustainable change in Ontario's mental health and addictions system. With expertise in implementation, knowledge mobilization (KMb), evaluation, equity, lived experience engagement, and data management, PSSP is on the ground across the province, collaborating with a wide variety of health and social care partners to build a stronger, more equitable and more accessible mental health and substance use care system.